I’ll forgive a lot for an IMAX film shot in 4K resolution with a ridiculously dramatic M83 score featuring panoramic vistas of Iceland that I can watch without shitty 3D glasses, but the surprise of Oblivion is that there wasn’t that much to forgive (though the score is pretty overbearing at times). Other than Tom Cruise’s creepy hairless torso, and the fact that every woman in the future seems to be a supermodel who wants to fling herself at Tom Cruise’s creepy, hairless, 20-years-older torso, it’s actually an artful mish-mash of older sci-fi that borrows from just enough sources that it doesn’t feel like a ripoff. It succeeds on the strength of cinematography, character design, and careful withholding of information. It leaves you feeling confused until the very end, much like my lovemaking, and when it finally lays its cards on the table, it feels like it actually had something to say. Or at least, something to say other than “thanks for the 15 dollars, sucker!”

Tom Cruise plays Jack Harper, because “Jack” is to action film heroes what “Madison” is to yuppies, but even the genericness of his name is partially explained later by a clever script. Cruise is part of a “mop-up crew,” a two-person team consisting of Cruise and a hot redhead played by Andrea Riseborough, who live a sick sky-flat with a heated pool and modernist platform bed high above a post-apocalyptic Earth, whose job it is to do maintenance work on series of droids that protect giant, seawater-fed reactors that power the new human colony on Titan, a moon of Saturn. The droids protect the reactors from “Scavs,” the remnants of an alien race that lost a war to the humans, though the Earth was rendered mostly uninhabitable in the process. (*deep breath*) OR SO TOM CRUISE AND THIS REDHEAD BROAD HAVE BEEN TOLD.

Riseborough’s job seems to consist mainly of manning the communications systems that Cruise is already connected to and showing him her sweet bewbs whenever he starts asking too many questions. But whatever, I can buy that, I guess. Where Oblivion really soars is in the droid design. To create truly effective sci-fi, the machines or aliens or whatever non-human characters you throw in there have to have a real personality, be characters unto themselves. And from visual design to movement to sound design, Oblivion‘s droids are damn near iconic. Squinty, unthinking, possibly-malevolent little balls of death, making even more overt the fascistic overtones already present in Apple’s sleek master race of consumer products. They are the shit. It hits that sweet-spot of sci-fi that’s creating and extrapolating from the present in equal measure.

There are more than a few plot twists and ambiguities that will leave you thinking “what the hell is going on?” throughout a lot of the middle of the movie that I won’t ruin for you here, but suffice to say, I thought I’d zoned out and missed a crucial point of exposition at a few points. Nope. The script (by director Joseph Kosinski, Karl Gadjusek, and Michael Arndt) just saves most of the explanation until the very end, and it’s your confusion that keeps it compelling. Tom Cruise’s acting… well, it’s Tom Cruise, but it works. He’s much too robot-earnest and intense to do anything comedic, or anything that requires self-reflection or wry personability, but he does driven, shocked, and upstanding perfectly adequately, and that’s mostly all that’s required of him here. Plus there’s an aspect of his character in the film that’s totally believable about Tom Cruise.

When he jumps in his space shower, we see his perfectly hairless torso, which I mention because I find it odd that so many movies choose to depict their protagonists, who are otherwise portrayed as being without vanity, as the kind of guys who would take 20 minutes out of their schedule every few days to Bic their chests clean. Also it should be said that for an otherwise really fit guy, Tom Cruise has surprisingly saggy little man titties. And it’s pretty funny that the only two women in the movie are supermodel attractive, (and are important scientists, conveniently) and totally into Tom Cruise. At one point, Ukranian former Victoria’s Secret model Olga Kurylenko expresses a desire to grow “old and fat” with Tom Cruise, and I laughed out loud. Yeah… you’ll be fat like Tom Cruise is tall, sweetheart.

Like so many action and sci-fi films, there comes a moment late in the film where a character is called on to sacrifice his life for the others. Most of the time, this is done on a whim, by a minor character who’s all like “TAKE ME, GOD! I’M UGLY AND UNIMPORTANT TO THE SCRIPT!” as he willingly goes off to meet his maker with a wink and a thumb’s up to the protagonist and his lady (Prometheus and The Town are two recent films that come to mind in this regard). In Oblivion, the sacrifice happens, but it’s actually treated with the gravity something like that deserves, and it feels like a crucial part of the story and not just an easy solution to a story problem. It’s representative of the movie as a whole. Oblivion borrows from Wall E, The Matrix, 2001, Philip K. Dick, Blade Runner, The Terminator, and others, but it doesn’t feel enough like any one of them to be predictable. It’s not new, but it’s new enough. And as cheesy as it was at times, it actually felt like it had its own personality, and wasn’t just a composite of popular tropes and focus group suggestions.

In Tropic Thunder he gave the same performance that he always does. It was just the script, the fat suit, and us knowing that it is Tom Cruise in the fat suit that made it funny. Not so much Tom Cruise. Try imagining Tom Cruise without the fat suit during his scenes, not so funny anymore.

his part in Tropic Thunder is pretty much the only thing i DON’T like about that movie. but i do think Tom Cruise is a pretty great action star, or at the very least, knows how to pick and make entertaining action flicks.

His character is supposedly based on a real studio head, so while I too didn’t like the “old white guy into hip hop” bit, the fact that the it’s a send-up of a reality just makes it feel like it wasn’t funny because it’s an inside joke not many people will get, not because of anything Cruise does wrong. In fact, I submit that Tom Cruise could easily pull a Leslie Nelson, big action star in his youth to spoof star in his older years. I bet he could be a helluva straight man (no gay joke intended).

pretty spot on review, I loved the set design in this film, everything even the waste land just looks so beautiful and the red head is so hot, I wish I lived on a platform with her and be an efficient team.

Yeah it borrows from lots of other films but it does it in a good way.

I think he meant Blade Runner specifically and Philip K. Dick written material. Also if I am not mistaken Blade Runner is a ‘loose’ adaptation of Dick’s ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ Maybe that is why he made the distinction.

On a tangent, most movies are never as good as the books they’re based on but Blade Runner is, by my count at least, eleventy-two thousand times better than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I mean, shoot, Philip K. Dick had some pretty good ideas but he was a shitty writer.

He is easier to take now that young chicks aren’t swooning for him anymore, but I remember seeing trailers for Minority Report thinking how cool that movie would be if Cruise wasn’t starring in it and Spielberg wasn’t directing it.

Isn’t it weird that celebrities are the only people we actively hate without them actually doing anything to us? Like if we just stopped going to a particular grocery store because we just hated the bagger for no particular reason. Don’t get me wrong, maybe Patty Boots is really Katie Holmes or Nicole Kidman or Tom Cruise ran over her dog or something, but it’s just so weird that people refuse to see movies based on hating celebrities.

I saw this last weekend. It’s the kind of old fashioned star vehicle that William Goldman could devote a chapter to and that aspect bugged me a little. The exposition at the start was condescending as hell and should be cut and the riffs from other sci-fi movies are distracting; but the drones are like flying ED-209s, the ruined world was superb and Jaime Lannister is in it as a hard-bitten Sergeant with a supercool sniper rifle. B+ is a fair grade.

I had zero interest in seeing this movie, mostly from apathy to generic sci-fi and TC (that’s Tom Cruise), but between this review and one of my co-worker’s generally positive review of it, I’m going to definitely check it out when it comes out on netflix instant.

Not too sure about “out of his depth”. In this he’s an ace fighter pilot, a genius mechanic, a lover, a romantic, an expert in close combat, an aesthete, a curator, a landscape gardener, a motorcyclist, a humanitarian, a medic and he also gets to do some trademark running. Hey, was his character based on me? Bloody cheek.

I saw where it was going the moment I saw it was only two people, a vague person on a camera telling them what to do, and restriction zones. I felt Moon/The Island immediately, and when the Shymalmamaiwihr1241an moment came, I was like, “Oh, well, yeah…show the ship take off and land more I guess. Sigh, fucking knew it.”

Olga Kerylenko is the main thing that brought Oblivion down for me. She’s not a good actress, and you could almost see here makeup crew following her around, just off camera, at all times. It was distracting. At least they managed to put a tiny smudge of dirt on her face about 10 seconds before the credits rolled.

Everything about this movie was great except for the plot. I don’t see how you can like this movie so much given leaps of logic the plot requires you to make. It has great visuals and the tone is pretty great but the motivations and actions of all the characters make no sense(bar Tom Cruise). Oblivion is perfectly average which is fine if you like Sci-Fi and want to get your monthly hit but it’s nothing more. Next year this movie will be completely forgotten.

I want to learn more about this 4K. I gave up on 3D after only 2 films: Alice in Wonderland (Enjoyed it despite having to hold my head “just right” and squinting thru beat-to-shit glasses) and Tron (just a crappy film.)

But was the 3D crappy? I’m a 3D apologist and in the right hands (Scorsese, Henry Selick) it can be pretty great/useful. Though Oblivion wasn’t in 3D so I’m not sure why we’re discussing it.

I will say that even though I didn’t love Oblivion, it’s one of the few films I’ve seen in a long time that takes great advantage of IMAX. If you are going to see it, seek out an IMAX theater for it. It’s worth it.

Everything felt completely ripped off, from the blackface Predator masks, the fighting himself a la Looper, and basically everything except the awesome nuances of Moon. A sure sign that your movie sucks is if Morgan Freeman lays the entire plot out in 3 minutes just before the big finale. I walked out feeling that, except for designing a cool new spaceship to recreate Top Gun faces, Oblivion just smashed together what it thought were the neat parts of the genuinely interesting and successful sci-fis from recent memory.

Yes! The Skybox is sick! Only thing though, with a crib that high off the ground and everyone living underground who will see it..lol The film’s drones did give it the edge, as they were their own characters leveling all in their path. I really enjoyed the scene when the drones escorted him into the center, let’s just say he had his ship set on Cruise control. One wrong move and it would have been curtains for our hero. Thanks for sharing your opinion of the film..Later